Why the Edlington case should not be published in full

A sign on the family home of the young boys who seriously assaulted two children in Edlington. Photograph: Anna Gowthorpe/PA

From a child welfare policy perspective, the most disturbing aspects of the tragic Edlington story are twofold: first, children being subjected to criminal proceedings – in contrast to the welfare approach consistent with the UN convention on the rights of the child, and common in most European states; and, second, the demands by the Conservative leader, David Cameron, in the Commons that the serious case review be published in full.

The combined impact of these measures is likely to be highly detrimental to promoting children's welfare in many ways.

We should do all we can to aid the recovery and rehabilitation of the two young victims – and future victims – of horrific assaults. This process can only be delayed by the detailed revelations in criminal proceedings and those contained within the full case review, which in turn will feed and sustain local and national media interest. The popular press is calling for the "devil children" to be named, but this may lead to a cocktail of concern, curiosity and, sadly, occasional taunting and further cruelty for the victims that will make it far more difficult for the two boys and their families to regain some semblance of ordinary life at school, with their friends and in their neighbourhood.

However abhorrent their actions, we know that the young boys who carried out these appalling assaults were a similar age to their victims. Their own parents had failed them, completing the tragic circle that connects victim with perpetrator. But unless we see revenge as the prime determinant of youth justice policy, and an abandonment of all hope of changing troubled young lives for the better, there is little to be gained from the documentation of such depravity. It will only make the task of those charged with helping these young people more difficult not only as a constant reminder of their cruelty – engendered by the media interest – but also in challenging the perverse status that often accompanies such terrible acts of cruelty carried out by the very young.

Furthermore, the court proceedings and the publication of the full case review will only add to the further de-contextualisation of safeguarding children, shifting the main focus on to the failures of children's services and, in particular, their staff. This inevitably affects the morale of staff carrying out such complex work, makes recruitment more difficult, and may deter the entry of able and committed people into training – all of which will make it more difficult to safeguard highly vulnerable children and young people. There is evidence that this negative context may also impact on decision-making where there are concerns about a child's welfare, resulting in an overly safety-first approach and contributing to more children coming into care, some of whom could have remained at home with support services.

Then there is the consideration that serious case reviews are dependent on the co-operation of the staff involved in these complex cases. If co-operation was not forthcoming or, as is more likely, the serious case review became a litigious adversarial process, with legal representation of all parties, it is very unlikely that this would result in the analytical depth required to learn all the lessons from individual cases.

The main purpose of the courts should be the child's welfare. The main purpose of serious case reviews is to learn the general lessons from what has gone wrong in individual cases in order to better safeguard children. We have already failed four young people on the first count. We should not compound this by failing them, and future children at risk, on the second.

• Mike Stein is a research professor in the social policy research unit, University of York

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